Yuva India , livre ebook

Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd. - Ray Titus

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94 pages

English

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Yuva India takes a deep dive into the lives of India's young men and women. In unravelling what makes them tick, the book uncovers the phenomenon of 'attitudinal convergence' that is rapidly growing across youth cohorts in India. Tracing its origin to the arrival of and exposure to a 'composite culture', the research behind 'convergence' zeroes in on how a young India is defining itself using new-age sensibilities. Drawing on insights collected over a decade, Ray documents and analyses how young men and women in India approach issues of identity, image, sexuality, spirituality, personal relevance, social connections and community, and professional pursuits. In a one-of-a-kind analysis, using comprehensive data from across the nation, Ray scrutinizes young India's psyche to make sense of their aspirations. Filled with numerous first-person accounts and brand stories, Yuva India provides an insightful understanding of India's most valuable asset, its youth population. The present and the future of India's young, it reveals, will be invaluable not just for business and brand managers, but also for all those who wish to engage with them.

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Publié par	Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Date de parution	25 février 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184006865
Langue	English

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Extrait

RAY TITUS

YUVA INDIA
Consumption and Lifestyle Choices of a Young India
RANDOM HOUSE INDIA
C ONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction: Young India and the Arrival of Homogeneity
Exploring Convergence
Social Images and Identity: The Crafting of Persona
Activism and Purpose: The Pursuit of Meaning
Religiosity to Spirituality: The Blurring of Identity
Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship: The Quest for Fulfilment
Socio-Sexual Orientations: The Move to Practice and Acceptance
Personal Spaces and Community: The Seeking of Balance
Virtual and Real Socializing: The Practice of Parallel Existence
Coping Behaviour: The Struggle for Sagacity
Compositized Yuva India: The Implications for Institutions
Epilogue
References
Acknowledgements
Follow Random House
Copyright
To
Thomas Titus
Foreword
A s a consultant to the best brands in the world I ve had the good fortune of working with the best minds in business. If there s one thing I ve recognized as critical to the health of any business, it is keeping their brands relevant in the minds of their target consumers. Of course, that s easier said than done, especially in a climate where consumers are ever-changing, and what I call moving targets . The one segment that s evolving at a rapid pace in India is its youth. Capturing their interest and keeping it is proving to be a Herculean task for brands and businesses in India. Part of the problem, I believe, is in the way businesses approach their young consumers. Bereft of an understanding of their psyche, brands stumble, and more so when they base their business decision-making on heuristics or hearsay. The insight-deficit that businesses targeting the young are plagued with has proven more than costly for many of them. I must add that though there have also been others that have kept pace with their young consumers, reinventing themselves to remain relevant. To me, Caf Coffee Day, a client of Landor, did a fantabulous job in staying in step with and perhaps even ahead of their target young Indian consumers.
It s in the regard of young Indian consumers and their lives that I find Ray s work to be insightful and of immense value. What he has done is delve deep into the lives of India s young men and women. In doing so, he has also uncovered what may be a predictor to the evolution of youth sensibilities in India. The convergence he is pointing to is on the rise. The composite culture he identifies as the driver of a composite identity is turning into a pan-Indian phenomenon. This surely has major implications for all those who have the young in India on their target screen . Connecting to consumers requires that you know their everyday lives, their hopes and aspirations. Ray s work enables just that. It both documents and analyses Yuva India s everyday existence. Reading Ray s work is like participating in an anthropological immersion programme. He enables readers in knowing how the young in India are managing their self-images while connecting to a social community. He dives deep into uncovering social and psychological issues the young in India deal with. In writing both about their professional and personal lives, Ray has comprehensively captured details that make up their existence.
Having spent close to a decade understanding consumers and taking the learning to create value for my clients, I know how important it is to have depth-driven insights back up business decision-making. Yuva India in the end presents an opportunity to gain such insights.
I hope you will use it to your advantage to engage with India s youth and get to your desired professional or personal outcomes.
Lulu Raghavan
Managing Director, Landor Associates
Introduction
Young India and the Arrival of Homogeneity
W illiam Sangma and Selva Manickam don t look a bit like each other. William is short, stocky and his oriental features are viewed by many as even exotic. Selva on the other hand is tall at 6 feet, and has dark, sunburnt, brooding looks that seem to suggest he could well be on his way to superstardom in the Tamil film industry. William (Will) calls Meghalaya his home, while Selva is a Tamilian who lives in Coimbatore. Selva recently turned twenty-four, while Will is on his way to turning twenty-five. Though on the surface it may seem like the two have nothing in common, the truth is that the similarities are glaring.
Consider their favourite pastime. Selva almost always spends his leisure with his buddies. Their favourite hang-out is the Caf Coffee Day inside Spencer s building on Cross Cut Road. That s where they get together to talk mostly shop, girls, and movies (and that s when they are not on Facebook). Coincidentally, Will too spends his free time with his buddies. They too meet up at the Caf Coffee Day at the Hotel Pegasus to talk about link-ups, heartbreaks, random stuff, and movies. Will even thinks he looks a bit like Ranbir. If there s one thing both Selva and Will are crazy about, it s the cricket T20 championships. Selva roots for the Chennai Super Kings, while Will swears by the Kolkata Knight Riders, both catching all the T20 action glued to their television sets at home, with buddies. Both are in relationships that have lasted over two years. Selva wants to marry his girlfriend once he is settled in his job, while Will says he ll wait a bit longer to see if his relationship can materialize into marriage.
Selva dreams of being famous. Some day, Selva wants to quit his job to direct a Tamil movie. He thinks he has it in him to tell a story on the silver screen. Meanwhile, Will wants to make enough money so he can set up his own dance studio. Will is keen to make salsa popular among Indians. Both think financial stability is important only so one can pursue one s dreams.
Listening to Selva and Will was like listening to the same person talking. In so many ways I realized that as much as they were describing their own lives, they were describing each other too. Their dreams and desires almost seemed to mirror each other s.
I was intrigued.
Enough to take my curiosity and turn it into more time spent with young people, and that included Aveet and Aditi, the former a Punjabi Hindu from Chandigarh, and the latter, hailing from the small town of Kottayam in Kerala. Personality-wise Aveet and Aditi are poles apart. While Aveet is bold, in-your-face, and shoots her mouth off at every given opportunity, Aditi is sensitive, guarded, and speaks only when spoken to. Yet again, despite the personality differences, they have much in common when it comes to their aspirations. Both want to delay getting married by a few years, since they want to establish their careers after completing their MBA programme, despite pressure to get married from their respective families. Aveet is clear she wanted to make the choice of when to get married, and she also wants to participate in the decision-making process of who her life partner would be. Aditi does not mind the decision being taken by her parents as long as she gets the final say in whether a choice culminates in marriage.
Both Aveet and Aditi want to continue working post marriage, because to them it signifies being financially independent. But then again, Aveet is a self-confessed shopaholic who claims shopping is therapeutic, while for Aditi, shopping is an activity that helps her socialize. Aveet is brand conscious, whereas Aditi is more product conscious. Aveet is an avid foodie, eating out as often as possible. Aditi enjoys eating out as much as home food cooked by her beloved mom. In fact, staying in the hostel made her crave for her mom s food even more. Both the girls swear by family. Aveet talks the most to her father, while Aditi shares all her secrets with her mom.
The lives of Aveet and Aditi seem on many levels similar to those of Selva and William. Like Selva and Will, Aveet and Aditi are joined in their desire for an independent life. They are keen on making their own decisions about where to live, whom to be with, what profession to pursue, and so on. Of course, both never think of such independent decision-making as one that would cut out their families.
Today, the story of India can only be told through the stories of its countless young. I am grateful that as part of my profession, I ve been given the opportunity to be a keen onlooker to this story. I have also studied it. Eleven years of teaching at an MBA programme, and I have seen countless young people pass through my courses. Many of the students I have taught have spent time discussing their lives with me, and I have had a similar realization while talking to my students: it seems like they were pretty much telling each other s stories. Take the girls, for example. The one thing that uniformly made them paranoid was the thought of marriage. It wasn t as much the thought of having to spend their life with another person as much as their fear of losing their freedom and individuality. Now that s just one factor. There were many others that bind the young women and men in India together.
Even when as part of my academic work I travelled across India to meet the young women and men who were looking to join an MBA programme, I felt like every place I visited teemed with young people with the same set of aspirations and desires. In Siliguri, when I spoke to the young boys, almost all of them spoke of moving to bigger cities for higher education, to find jobs and earn good money. The young women of Jaipur too wanted out . So did those in Lucknow, Patna, and Indore. It wasn t like they were running away from their present-day conditions; they wanted out so they could explore the wide world in front of them and make their own choices about how they wanted to live their lives. The young men and women I met in Hyderabad told me they were willing to leave the city for greener pastures elsewhere. Their sole focus was on securing their future, even if that meant moving to unfamiliar places.